WMT - Walmart Inc.
109.62 0.00 (0.00%)
After hours: 5:54PM EDT
| Previous Close | 109.65 |
| Open | 109.80 |
| Bid | 109.47 x 800 |
| Ask | 109.80 x 800 |
| Day's Range | 108.92 - 109.84 |
| 52 Week Range | 82.90 - 109.96 |
| Volume | 3,113,476 |
| Avg. Volume | 6,199,554 |
| Market Cap | 312.934B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 0.62 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 38.36 |
| EPS (TTM) | 2.86 |
| Earnings Date | Aug 15, 2019 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 2.12 (1.93%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | 2019-08-08 |
| 1y Target Est | 110.54 |
- MarketWatch•10 hours ago
Lobbying on trade issues could set new record as companies sound off on tariffs, USMCA
As the Trump administration puts tariffs on a range of imported goods and pushes a replacement deal for Nafta, lobbying on trade-related issues could set a new record this year.
- American City Business Journals•10 hours ago
Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi has already sold $100 million in ads
Quibi doesn’t launch until next year, and already Jeffrey Katzenberg’s mobile platform for “quick bites” of high-end content has sold two-thirds of its ad inventory.
- InvestorPlace•11 hours ago
The Target Stock Dip Was Barely a Blip
For all the headlines it caused, the two-day outage at Target (NYSE:TGT) checkouts barely registered with investors.Source: Mike Mozart via Flickr (Modified)All told, TGT stock lost about 1.5% in the past two days, after thousands of people abandoned their shopping carts and just walked out of stores over the weekend.The cash register outage came just a month after stellar earnings sent the stock shooting upward, from barely $70 per share on May 16 to nearly $90 per share a month later. The company in May said same-store sales grew 4.8% on 4.3% comparable traffic growth for the three months ending in April.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsSince then, Target has gone from strength to strength. It raised the dividend slightly, re-launched its in-house media company as Roundel, and announced same-day delivery through Shipt, a grocery delivery service acquired in 2017. Macro vs. Micro for TargetUnlike the massive 2013 data breach that eventually cost CEO Gregg Steinhafel his job in 2016, the two-hour outage on June 14 was seen as a problem caused by regular maintenance. A second, smaller problem processing credit cards on Father's Day was blamed on vendor NCR (NYSE:NCR). * 7 Value Stocks to Buy for the Second Half Rather than attack Target as negligent, most analysts chose to focus on how any company could be hit by such problems, given how dependent they are on giant, interconnected computing systems. There was a sigh of relief that no Target customer data was lost.Target's strategy under current CEO Brian Cornell has been to match its larger rivals in technology but differentiate itself with smaller stores inside urban centers, something Walmart (NYSE:WMT) abandoned earlier in the decade.While the fallout from the tech outage is likely to be brief, Target shares will be hit by general market turbulence. Consider that the Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) business conditions index is forecasting a recession ahead.A spike in jobless claims and a bad employment report for May are far more likely to impact Target shares or rivals like Walmart and Kroger (NYSE:KR) than the weekend's problems. Wait for ItIn general, conditions at stores like Target, once called "discount" stores, have been improving. Sales for May are up 3.2% year-over-year. While shopping malls continue to dwindle, stand-alone discounters like Target continue to rack up gains.Historians will note that Target itself emerged from the now-defunct Dayton-Hudson department store chain. The remaining stores rebranded as Marshall Field's and became part of what's now Macy's (NYSE:M) in 2005.Target, meanwhile, has been called Walmart's primary competitor. Even though the Arkansas-based chain is more than seven times its size, Target is more profitable. It brought $3 billion out of $75 billion in sales last year to the net income line. Compare that to $6 billion on $514 billion for Walmart. Despite this, and a dividend yielding 3.1% after its latest raise, Target currently sells for just 15 times trailing earnings. That's less than half Walmart's figure. Both are worth about 60 cents for each dollar of sales. The Bottom Line on TGT StockThe macro news is bound to overwhelm the micro news in the short term. Target's glitch is being treated as just that and, sadly, isn't a buying opportunity.If the economy doesn't collapse, Target under CEO Brian Cornell is in good shape, and a bargain for investors seeking income. If there is a recession, Target is well-positioned to get through it, but you might want to wait to see how deep the current fear goes before jumping in.Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of a new environmental story, Bridget O'Flynn and the Bear , available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned shares in AMZN. More From InvestorPlace * 4 Top American Penny Pot Stocks (Buy Before June 21) * 7 Value Stocks to Buy for the Second Half * 7 Hot Stocks to Buy for a Seemingly Sleepy Summer * 6 Chip Stocks Staring At Big Headwinds in 2019 Compare Brokers The post The Target Stock Dip Was Barely a Blip appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Market Realist•13 hours ago
Trump Launches 2020 Campaign with ‘Keep America Great’ Slogan
Yesterday, President Donald Trump officially launched his 2020 reelection campaign in Florida. We're now more than halfway into his presidency, so the question now is whether President Trump has delivered on his 2016 promises.
- InvestorPlace•13 hours ago
4 Burning Questions for the Owners of Alibaba Stock
In May, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) reported what appeared to be blowout earnings. The report topped expectations by a mile, but it did nothing for Alibaba stock. BABA stock price barely advanced following the earnings release, and it is still down 9% over the last three months.Source: Shutterstock What's going on? Surely, some of the struggles of Alibaba stock are related to the trade war. The longer it drags on, the more the Chinese economy will continue to slump. But Alibaba faces some unique issues of its own, namely that people are increasingly questioning the company's accounting. BABA is now trying to sell more stock to the public, while its short interest has ballooned to 9% of its available shares. That's a massive number for a company of its size. * 7 Value Stocks to Buy for the Second Half The shorts have been encouraged by the internet posts of a person who claims to be a financial professional These posts, made under the name Deep Throat IPO, contain allegations about Alibaba's accounting, leading many investors to conclude that BABA can't be trusted.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Is Alibaba Actually Earning Much Money?For last quarter, Alibaba reported a huge jump in its net income. In fact, on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis, Alibaba crushed analysts' average expectation. It reported non-GAAP earnings per share for the quarter of $1.28 against the consensus outlook of just 95 cents. Meanwhile, its GAAP EPS of $1.47 absolutely annihilated analyst estimates of just 51 cents per share.What explains the huge disparity? Most of Alibaba's reported profits for the quarter came from marking up the value of its investments rather than from its operating businesses. For the quarter, its reported net income soared 252% year-over-year to $3.5 billion. However, its actual profits from its operating business went down 5% to just $1.3 billion, though it would have posted a modest gain if it hadn't had to pay a lawsuit settlement.Still, its worth asking what's going on. Alibaba reports phenomenal revenue growth rates, yet its core retail profits are essentially flat. And its much-touted cloud and digital media divisions continue to lose money. Take out the increased profits from its investments - which doesn't mean much unless BABA can turn that paper into actual cash in the future - and BABA stock is absurdly expensive compared to its actual cash earnings. Is Alibaba Really Bigger Than Wal-Mart And Amazon?There's long been a great deal of dispute over whether Alibaba and other Chinese retailers inflate their GMVs (Gross Merchandise Volume). The SEC probed Alibaba's sales reporting a few years ago, and investors have made allegations about other Chinese firms like PinDuoDuo (NASDAQ:PDD) inflating their revenue.In the case of Alibaba, the numbers get more and more questionable as time goes on. Alibaba claims its GMV has soared more than tenfold from 2012 to today, with that figure jumping from $80 billion then to more than $800 billion now. For comparison sake, that's more than Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) handle annually combined! You might say that Alibaba's business could be that big because China is so huge. Remember, though, that Walmart is a leading retailer in 25 countries and Amazon has a huge overseas businesses as well. It strains credibility to believe that Alibaba is larger than Walmart and Amazon put together.There's also the matter of how much each company generates per employee. That is a common check for fraud, and Alibaba comes out looking rather peculiar. Deep Throat IPO puts it well:The other ratio I find fascinating is GMV per employee. Walmart's GMV per employee is $284,000. Amazon's is $428,000. Alibaba's is $8,366,000 per employee. They are truly masters at doing more with less.Is it realistic for Alibaba's employees to be 20 times more efficient than Amazon's? If you own BABA stock, you better hope so. Is Ant Financial Worth Anything Close To Investors' Expectations?Supposedly, Alibaba's Ant Financial, a digital payments facilitator, is worth $150 billion, which would make up around a third of the overall $400 billion market cap of Alibaba stock. In fact, Ant Financial was valued at $150 billion when it raised money last year. However, there is reason to be skeptical about that valuation. Specifically, it scrapped plans for an IPO last year, and it was supposed to launch an IPO this year, but the offering appears to be delayed again.Meanwhile, Ant Financial, which is supposed to be such a dominant global payments player, doesn't appear to be doing so well. Last year, Alibaba, which has a profit-sharing agreement with Ant Financial, did not receive any distributions from Ant because Ant didn't make any profits. This past quarter, however, Alibaba earned $77 million from Ant Financial. $77 million seems like a pittance, given Ant Financial's supposed $150 billion valuation. Perfectly normal. What Happens If the Chinese Financial System Freezes Up?For all of Alibaba's purported profits, the company keeps needing more money. There's probably good reason for that, since most of its "profits" don;t come in the form of cash while it is investing money in a nearly endless list of start-ups both in China and overseas. As mentioned above, Ant Financial did a big fundraising push last year, and now Alibaba is trying to unload a cool $20 billion of its stock in a secondary offering in Hong Kong.All this brings up the trade war and the weakening yuan. The yuan is near seven per dollar, its lowest level in years, and pressure appears to be growing for a major devaluation of the currency. What happens to Alibaba's ability to raise more money to keep its investing carousel spinning if China's capital markets freeze up? Also, the valuations of all these nascent businesses Alibaba has invested in will implode if the IPO window shuts down for these sorts of firms. The Verdict on BABA StockIt's been interesting watching Alibaba and JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) over the past year or two. As the Chinese economy has slowed, many of China's retailers have seen their growth rates sharply drop. JD, for example, has gone from 50% annual growth to just 20% recently. Alibaba's growth rate, however, appears totally unaffected by the deepening Chinese malaise. It keeps pumping out 50% annual revenue growth, rain or shine. Does Alibaba have a special sauce that keeps it immune to economic weakness?So far, BABA stock has been a winner. But how long can it keep up? Alibaba already claims to be larger than Amazon and Walmart put together. If the numbers are real, surely BABA will run out of people to sell to fairly soon; there are, after all, limits to a company's growth once it dominates a market. And if the numbers aren't real…At the time of this writing, Ian Bezek owned JD.com stock. You can reach him on Twitter at @irbezek. More From InvestorPlace * 4 Top American Penny Pot Stocks (Buy Before June 21) * 7 Value Stocks to Buy for the Second Half * 7 Hot Stocks to Buy for a Seemingly Sleepy Summer * 6 Chip Stocks Staring At Big Headwinds in 2019 Compare Brokers The post 4 Burning Questions for the Owners of Alibaba Stock appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Bloomberg•17 hours ago
Walmart’s Kickstarting a $1 Trillion Driverless Delivery Market
(Bloomberg) -- Walmart Inc. came to dominate retailing through its mastery of logistics—the complicated choreography of getting goods from farm or factory to the consumer. But even the world’s biggest store doesn’t make money selling its wares online in the U.S., largely due to runaway shipping costs. So Walmart is turning to robots.On a drizzly morning earlier this month, Walmart’s U.S. chief Greg Foran led reporters to a curbside package pickup kiosk outside its supercenter in Rogers, Arkansas. Idling there were three Ford delivery vans outfitted with self-driving technology developed by a Gatik, a Silicon Valley startup charged with a trial run aimed at cutting Walmart’s middle-mile shipping costs in half. Going driverless in pursuit of profit is a “no-brainer,” Foran said.As the buzz about human-carting robo-taxis starts to short-circuit, an unheralded segment of the driverless future is taking shape and showing promise: goods-moving robo-vans. Rather than serving up hot pizza pies or deploying headless robots to carry groceries to the doorstep, robo-vans travel on fixed routes from warehouse to warehouse or to a smaller pickup point, transporting packages to get them closer, but not all the way, to consumers.This may be the least glamorous part of the driverless delivery business, but the market for these monotonous “middle miles” could reach $1 trillion and may provide the fastest path to prosperity, analysts say.“This area has the least number of obstacles and the most certain return on invested capital in the near term,” said Mike Ramsey, an analyst with consultant Gartner Inc. “If you’re looking to start a business where you can actually generate revenue, this has fewer barriers than the taxi market.”Driving the demand is the boom in online shopping that has helped cause a severe shortage of truck drivers that tops 60,000 unfilled long-haul positions, according the American Trucking Associations. That has sent costs soaring for a job that is among the most dangerous due to the risk of wrecks and long periods spent on the road.Related: `Smokey and the Bandit' Charm Fades as Trucking Hiring Lags“This middle mile is the most expensive part of the whole supply chain; it’s a huge pain point,” said Gautam Narang, CEO of Gatik, which is attempting to automate Walmart’s “hub and spoke” warehouse system. “This fills a big gap in the market.”From a technological standpoint, business-to-business, or B2B, delivery is the straightforward counterpoint to the complexities of autonomous ride-hailing and driverless delivery directly to consumers, known as B2C or last-mile. Robo-vans like those being put to the test at Walmart follow fixed routes over and over, reducing the chance of mishaps and increasing their time in service generating revenue. Many of these routes are already established using human drivers today, so there’s little need to map new paths and create infrastructure to load and receive the goods.Related: Robot Rides Are Going to Deliver Pizza and Parcels Before PeopleFord Motor Co., testing many forms of driverless delivery, calls these repeatable routes “milk runs,” a throwback term to the days of household dairy delivery.“Anything on driverless delivery that is a milk run is a good application for autonomy,” said Sherif Marakby, chief executive officer of Ford’s autonomous vehicles unit. “B2C is a complex implementation for autonomy that will come with time, but B2B just makes it easier because you get volume and you can be more predictable.”The case for robots ferrying packages before people is becoming more compelling as robo-taxis struggle to gain traction. Consumers have grown wary of giving up the wheel, especially after a pedestrian was killed last year by an autonomous Uber Technologies Inc. test car. Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s driverless unit, initiated limited automated ride-hailing in suburban Phoenix late last year with human “safety drivers” on board. General Motors Co. no longer says it will debut a similar service this year. Instead, CEO Mary Barra now says the rollout will be “gated by safety.”QuicktakeWhen the Driverless Cars Arrive, Will You Climb In?: QuickTakeDriverless delivery also has another big advantage over robo-taxis: no demanding human passengers. “People have more emotions than boxes,” Ford’s Marakby said.Meanwhile, driverless delivery is already hitting the road. Swedish startup Einride recently began low-speed robo-deliveries on public roads in its home country. It has signed up several Fortune 500 clients, like tire-maker Michelin, plus logistics service provider DB Schenker and German grocer Lidl.Looking like a Star Wars Imperial troop transport on wheels, Einride’s T-Pod trucks are 60% cheaper to build because they lack a passenger compartment. If they get into a jam, they can be remote controlled by humans from a command center. One human monitors the remote controls for 10 trucks. The T-Pods operate in self-driving mode 95% of the time, according to CEO and founder Robert Falck.Stuffed with payload and no human driver, a T-Pod can operate around the clock and cut shipping costs in half. That’s why Falck says his company is already profitable, though he declines to give specifics.“There are solid economics behind this and that’s also what the customer realizes,” Falck said. “If you break down the numbers, it’s the best business case out there.”TuSimple, a San Diego startup valued at $1.1 billion, leads a pack of tech outfits seeking to automate long-haul trucking. The company has a fleet of 50 robot Peterbilt and Navistar trucks that have been transporting commercial loads in Arizona for a year. And while it isn’t profitable yet, it expects to book revenue of more than $1 million a month in the second half of the year.“If you break down the numbers, it’s the best business case out there.”In the final two weeks of May, its self-driving big rigs—equipped with cameras that can see more than a half-mile down the road—completed 10 test runs for the U.S. Postal Service of an arduous 1,000-mile stretch from Phoenix to Dallas. Over Memorial Day weekend, the trucks faced howling crosswinds and “mud rain,” a blinding combination of dust, wind and rain. And yet the robo-rigs consistently beat human-driven trucks to the mail depot by as much as two hours. “We were approaching the edge of our operational design domain,” said Chuck Price, TuSimple’s chief product officer. “But we were able to demonstrate that we can do it much faster, with high consistency and high reliability. So bottom line, it’s more efficient.”By next year, TuSimple says it will pull the safety driver and engineer it currently has babysitting its rigs and go fully driverless—something no robo-taxi has committed to yet. By 2023 or 2024, the company plans to have “commercially ready” robo-rigs rolling out of a factory of a major truck maker.That kind of confidence is hard to come by these days among the purveyors of robo-taxis, still struggling to figure out how to navigate the pedestrians, cyclists and unpredictable traffic of chaotic urban environments. Increasingly, the call of the open road and the mundane middle miles between warehouses is proving to be the clearest path to the autonomous future. That’s why big players like Waymo and Tesla Inc.—still working on driverless people haulers—are also developing robo-rigs.“There’s absolutely a market for this sort of thing,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst with Navigant Research. “People don’t really care much about what goes on behind the scenes to get them the products they want. But the value of all the goods being moved is far more than ride-hailing applications.”To contact the authors of this story: Keith Naughton in Southfield at knaughton3@bloomberg.netMatthew Boyle in New York at mboyle20@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Anne Riley Moffat at ariley17@bloomberg.net, Chester DawsonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- InvestorPlace•18 hours ago
Growth Is The Only Question That Should Worry JD.com Stock Investors
For most of the past year, investor concerns surrounding JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) have mainly been about CEO Richard Liu, who was arrested in early September on suspicion of rape. JD stock fell 6% on the first day of trading following the news, further extending a drop that had begun in early June 2018.Source: Daniel Cukier via FlickrLiu was in Minneapolis for a residency as part of a doctorate program in business administration for "top-level executives" working full-time in China.While journalists wrote breathlessly about the shares plunging after Liu's arrest, the real question -- for investors -- is why JD stock began falling about a year ago in the first place and where it may go from here.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips JD.com is InfrastructureLike Alibaba Group Holding (NASDAQ:BABA), JD.com stock is a play on Chinese e-commerce infrastructure. But unlike Alibaba, which focuses on clouds and retailing, JD.Com focuses on distribution. * 10 Stocks to Buy That Wall Street Expects to Soar for the Rest of 2019 JD.com is able to deliver orders profitably to remote villages, and is a leader in automated delivery in cities. The company delivers about 150,000 orders daily from 500 distribution bases and it has robots delivering fresh goods by land and air. While U.S. companies like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) struggle to get orders delivered in 24 hours, JD.com is getting some packages to their end point in 30 minutes.JD.com has a market cap of $33 billion and expects quarterly revenue of $21.85 billion, with profits of 5 cents a share, when it next announces earnings August 9. During the March quarter, when it was expected to earn 12 cents per share, it surprised investors with earnings of 74 cents. The delivery infrastructure has value in its own right, and there have been reports it might list the unit separately. China Growth ConcernsJD.com had revenue of $18.6 billion in 2014. That more than tripled, to nearly $70 billion, by 2018.My InvestorPlace colleague James Brumley wrote recently that investors are worried about JD tripling the number of its rural storefronts in China to 15,000.Serving 60-something moms and dads in rural villages is unique but selling refrigerators to their kids in Shanghai is harder. Despite having stores as big as 500,000 square feet, that's where I place my worries because then JD.com is competing directly with Alibaba. Unique NichesUnique niches are hard to come by, but JD.com keeps finding them. One of the more interesting is online sales of luxury goods, where it has a tie-up with Farfetch (NYSE:FTCH), a global seller of luxury brands that went public last September. * 7 Top-Rated Biotech Stocks to Invest In Today Farfetch China acquired Toplife, JD's luxury portal, in 2017. JD.com bought a $397 million stake in Farfetch and Liu sits on the Farfetch board. Farfetch opened a China portal on JD.com earlier this month, giving JD stock a much-needed boost.Which leads to the other bearish call on JD.com: the slowing growth of China itself. The trade wars have Morningstar cutting its growth estimates for the world's second-biggest economy in half, to 3.25%. That's still higher than U.S. growth. Bottom Line on JD.com StockThe trade war has made Chinese stocks volatile, especially in the tech sector. But JD.com stock is now selling at a Walmart (NASDAQ:WMT) price, when its $70 billion in sales are matched with its $33 billion valuation. (Walmart is worth $311 billion on $515 billion in sales.)JD.com's growth means it hasn't yet made a profit for a full year, but if it hits the mark in August, and continues to make money through 2019, while growing that unique infrastructure, it's got to be worth money to a speculative investor.Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of the mystery thriller, The Reluctant Detective Finds Her Family, available at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned shares in AMZN. More From InvestorPlace * 4 Top American Penny Pot Stocks (Buy Before June 21) * 5 Red-Hot IPO Stocks to Buy for the Long Run * 5 Stocks to Buy for $20 or Less * 4 Dow Jones Stocks Ready to Rise Compare Brokers The post Growth Is The Only Question That Should Worry JD.com Stock Investors appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Moody's•2 days ago
BJS Wholesale Club Inc -- Moody's announces completion of a periodic review of ratings of BJS Wholesale Club Inc
Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") has completed a periodic review of the ratings of BJS Wholesale Club Inc and other ratings that are associated with the same analytical unit. The review was conducted through a portfolio review in which Moody's reassessed the appropriateness of the ratings in the context of the relevant principal methodology(ies), recent developments, and a comparison of the financial and operating profile to similarly rated peers. This publication does not announce a credit rating action and is not an indication of whether or not a credit rating action is likely in the near future.
Motley Fool•2 days agoThe 1 Part of Walmart’s Online Strategy That Isn’t Working
The urban-focused Jet.com hasn’t lived up to expectations.
- Investopedia•2 days ago
Kroger Reports Earnings Below a 'Death Cross'
The markets will be looking for guidance related to online sales and in-store foot traffic in the supermarket chain's upcoming report.
- MarketWatch•2 days ago
Walmart adding wireless experts by the holidays, part of consumer electronics push
Walmart Inc. said Tuesday that it will add wireless experts to 600 more stores by the holidays, part of an overall push to upgrade consumer electronics departments. More than 3,000 Walmart stores will have dedicated wireless experts. Walmart also announced that, starting with AT&T Inc. customers, Walmart shoppers will be able to purchase a complete "postpaid" cell phone on the Walmart website. Each carrier will ultimately have its own page for cell phone purchases. Walmart plans to improve its consumer electronics offering nationwide with live product demos, more accessories and additional enhancements. Walmart stock is up 17% for the year to date while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 13.2% for the period.
- Zacks•2 days ago
Amazon Aims to Launch Booze Delivery Services in San Francisco
Amazon (AMZN) is in talks with San Francisco Board of Supervisors for the approval of its liquor license.
- Markit•2 days ago
See what the IHS Markit Score report has to say about Walmart Inc.
Walmart Inc NYSE:WMTView full report here! Summary * Perception of the company's creditworthiness is positive * ETFs holding this stock are seeing positive inflows * Bearish sentiment is low * Economic output in this company's sector is contracting Bearish sentimentShort interest | PositiveShort interest is extremely low for WMT with fewer than 1% of shares on loan. This could indicate that investors who seek to profit from falling equity prices are not currently targeting WMT. Money flowETF/Index ownership | PositiveETF activity is positive. Over the last month, ETFs holding WMT are favorable, with net inflows of $9.63 billion. Additionally, the rate of inflows is increasing. Economic sentimentPMI by IHS Markit | NegativeAccording to the latest IHS Markit Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data, output in the Consumer Servicesis falling. The rate of decline is significant relative to the trend shown over the past year, and is accelerating. Credit worthinessCredit default swap | PositiveThe current level displays a positive indicator. WMT credit default swap spreads are near the lowest level of the last three years and indicate the market's continued positive perception of the company's credit worthiness.Please send all inquiries related to the report to score@ihsmarkit.com.Charts and report PDFs will only be available for 30 days after publishing.This document has been produced for information purposes only and is not to be relied upon or as construed as investment advice. To the fullest extent permitted by law, IHS Markit disclaims any responsibility or liability, whether in contract, tort (including, without limitation, negligence), equity or otherwise, for any loss or damage arising from any reliance on or the use of this material in any way. Please view the full legal disclaimer and methodology information on pages 2-3 of the full report.
- Motley Fool•2 days ago
Jet.com Has Almost Vanished -- and That's Fine With Walmart
Walmart paid a pretty penny for the e-commerce brand in 2016, but the retail giant has gotten its money's worth.
- InvestorPlace•2 days ago
Why JD Stock Has the Potential to Trade Above $30
Shares of Chinese e-commerce giant JD (NYSE:JD) have been in bounceback mode in early 2019 for one very simple reason: the narrative surrounding JD stock has changed dramatically -- for the better -- over the past several months.Source: Daniel Cukier via FlickrSpecifically, over the past several years, the narrative surrounding JD stock has been one defined by rapidly decelerating revenue growth and profit-margin erosion, which led to concerns surrounding the company's long-term profit growth potential. As those concerns grew, JD stock dropped. From $50 in early 2018, to $20 by late 2018.But that slowing growth, compressing-margin narrative has changed course over the past several months. JD's revenue growth rates have started to stabilize in the 20% range. Profit margins have begun to expand meaningfully. Management expects both of those trends to persist for the foreseeable future. Thus, clarity and optimism have been injected into this company's long-term profit outlook. That dynamic has ultimately propelled JD stock 30% higher in 2019.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsJD stock will stay in rally mode for the foreseeable future. This new narrative implies that JD has big long-term profit growth potential. That big long-term profit growth potential still isn't fully priced into shares. Hence, JD stock has runway to head even higher over the next several months. * 7 Top-Rated Biotech Stocks to Invest In Today How much higher? The fundamentals say JD stock has runway to levels north of $30. Consequently, I'm staying bullish on this stock until it crosses above $30. The Narrative Has Changed for the BetterWhen it comes to JD, the big-picture narrative is pretty straightforward.You basically have the Chinese version of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which operates a giant e-commerce business in China's rapidly expanding and urbanizing consumer economy. Much like Amazon, JD operates that e-commerce business at slim profit margins, but the long-term plan is to win market share and then leverage scale to meaningfully expand profit margins. Also, much like Amazon, JD has jumped into multiple tangential growth verticals -- like logistics -- and while those businesses operate at poor margins today, they too will eventually scale into much more profitable operations.Because the long-term plan follows the Amazon roadmap and does pave the path for huge profit growth at scale, JD stock soared in early 2018 to $50.But that long-term plan was called into question throughout 2018, as the company's growth rates decelerated and margins failed to expand with scale. Specifically, from the end of 2017 to the end of 2018, revenue growth dropped from ~40% to ~20%. Meanwhile, operating margins were sliced in half from 0.8% to 0.4%. As investors questioned the long-term profit trajectory, they sold the stock, and shares of JD fell all the way to $20.In early 2019, though, the narrative has changed course. It once again supports huge profit growth at scale. Revenue growth has stabilized over the past two quarters around 20%, and projects to stay at 20% next quarter too. Meanwhile, operating margins expanded 70 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2018, and 80 basis points in the first quarter of 2019.Thus, the Amazon roadmap of sustained big revenue growth on top of margin expansion is once again the underlying trend at JD. This underlying trend ultimately supports JD stock shooting above $30 soon. JD Stock Has Good Upside PotentialThe numbers supporting JD stock look pretty good at the moment.You have a 20%-plus revenue growth company with growth that projects to stabilize around the 20% mark for the foreseeable future. At the same time, you have operating margins that are hugely depressed, hugging the flatline, making huge upward progress in early 2019, and which project to keep heading higher over the next several years. Thus, for the foreseeable future, JD projects as a big revenue-grower on top of big margin expansion, which should drive doubly big profit growth.That's why analysts see EPS essentially doubling this year, rising by 50% next year, and rising another 35% the following year. Net net, analysts think this is a 45% annualized profit-grower over the next several years. JD stock trades at less than 40 times forward earnings.A 40 forward multiple for 45% profit growth is an attractive combo. If you model that out, EPS should get to around $2.20 by fiscal 2023, from $0.34 in fiscal 2018. High quality retailers, like Walmart (NYSE:WMT), tend to trade around 20 times forward earnings. Based on that 20 multiple, a reasonable fiscal 2022 price target for JD stock is $44. Discounted back by 10% per year, that equates to a fiscal 2019 price target of roughly $33.Thus, this rally in JD stock has fundamentally supported runway to above $30 in 2019. Bottom Line on JD StockThe narrative surrounding JD stock has completely changed over the past two quarters. This new narrative -- defined by stable revenue growth and big margin expansion -- once again supports robust profit growth at scale. * The 10 Best Index Funds to Buy and Hold This robust profit growth is not fully priced into JD stock, yet, and the stock has fundamentally supported runway to levels above $30 in 2019.As of this writing, Luke Lango was long JD, AMZN, and WMT. More From InvestorPlace * 4 Top American Penny Pot Stocks (Buy Before June 21) * The 7 Best Tech Stocks to Buy for the Second Half of 2019 * 7 Top-Rated Biotech Stocks to Invest In Today * 4 Semiconductor Stocks to Sell Compare Brokers The post Why JD Stock Has the Potential to Trade Above $30 appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Motley Fool•3 days ago
Amazon Is Improving the Whole Foods Experience
Whole Foods has seen a big improvement in customer experience over the past year.
- Motley Fool•3 days ago
Walmart's Taking On Target's Shipt and Amazon Prime Now
Customers can now pay an annual subscription for unlimited grocery delivery.
- Motley Fool•3 days ago
As Amazon Air Threat Grows, First Cracks in Carrier Relationships Appear
Other carriers may follow FedEx's lead and reassess their relationship with the e-commerce giant.
- Kiplinger•3 days ago
The 19 Best Stocks to Buy for the Rest of 2019
The past year has been exciting, if not a little stomach-churning. A raucous 25% rally to start the year unwound a miserable last few months of 2018, but that big advance has been chopped by one-third just since the beginning of May.Thus, when picking the best stocks to buy for the rest of 2019, you have to approach your selections with volatility - namely, avoiding it - in mind.Maybe the year's second act will be a little less exciting and a little more consistent for investors than the first. But with Chinese trade relations in limbo, Brexit still in the air and uncertainty about the Federal Reserve's future plans for interest rates, calm is far from a guarantee.To that end, here are the best stocks to buy for the rest of 2019. Not only are these stock picks a little less vulnerable to the volatility we've seen of late, but they each have solid backstories and/or fundamentals that should prove attractive if the hazy backdrop remains. SEE ALSO: The Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio: All 48 Buffett Stocks
- Benzinga•3 days ago
A Walmart World? Morgan Stanley Likes Walmart's Approach To Global Operations
Morgan Stanley’s Simeon Gutman raised Walmart's target price from $113 to $115, while keeping an Overweight rating on the stock. The company has a unique advantage because of its global footprint, which gives it perspective on how retailing is evolving in many places, while many competitors have only local information, Gutman wrote. Walmart is able to take what it learns about fulfillment, data usage, and e-commerce product curation, for example, in various locations and expanding those insights worldwide. 2.
- InvestorPlace•3 days ago
Amazon’s Advertising Business Is in a Transition
In its recent earnings, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) reported a substantial slowdown in the growth of Others segment, which is primarily made of advertising revenue. At 36%, the growth rate in this segment is only a few percentage points higher than Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) growth of 26% in the latest quarter. This has led to concerns that Amazon is close to hitting the saturation in terms of ad load and pricing. Strong growth in advertising segment gave a bullish momentum to Amazon stock in the last few quarters. Hence, a slowdown in this segment can hurt the long term sentiment.Source: Shutterstock InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsHowever, there are a number of levers which Amazon can use to deliver better advertising growth in the near term. For starters, Amazon is experimenting with video search features. It is also developing better tools to improve ad conversions. Amazon has a long growth runway to improve its advertising business and increase the market share in digital advertising. The advertising segment continues to be an important factor for Amazon stock and investors should closely watch the future growth trend in this business. A Slowdown or a Transition for Amazon?The quick growth in Amazon's advertising business had taken the market by surprise. Now, it has increased expectations, which led to a mismatch between revenue growth and current capabilities. Amazon's advertising growth in the last few quarters was over 100% but that was due to an accounting change. If we remove this factor, the Q4 2018 growth was 38%. The growth rate in the advertising segment was between 51% and 73% in the previous quarters.Source: Amazon filingsFacebook was also at this revenue rate in 2014. Since then, it has reported an average revenue growth rate of close to 45%. And like Facebook, Amazon has a number of options to improve its revenue from advertising. Long-term investors should see better sentiment in Amazon stock as the company improves its advertising tool. * 7 Top-Rated Biotech Stocks to Invest In Today Amazon is currently trying to make those improvements with video search ads, which is a direct shot at Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google. The less-controversial nature of Amazon's platform is also attracting more brands. Last year, Piper Jaffray's Michael Olson had forecasted that Amazon's advertising income will surpass AWS profits by 2021. Next Big Growth Driver for Amazon StockOne of the big opportunities with Amazon is to shift marketing spend from in-store branding. Morgan Stanley has estimated that a whopping $178 billion is spent on in-store brand promotions and coupons. While Google can only offer brand marketing to bigger consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) companies, Amazon can offer performance marketing. This means that Amazon's platform helps in driving sales for these companies. On the other hand, Google can only put the ads in front of customers -- it's far less of a guarantee of converting them into sales.This is a gradual process in which more ad dollars will shift to Amazon's platform. Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is trying to improve its own advertising business. Recently, the company moved its entire ad sales for its stores and website in-house. While Walmart has a larger sales base, Amazon is ahead in terms of its tools and third-party sales. This is a big advertising segment and Amazon is sure to grab more ad dollars from in-store promotions industry. What About the Competition?Amazon's rapid growth has alarmed Google and Facebook. Both these giants are now looking to expand their own retail presence. Facebook has launched new features which allow customers to directly make a purchase from within Instagram. Google has recently launched new shopping features at Google Marketing Live event. Users will be able to make purchases from within YouTube by the end of this year. Google will also have a personalized Google Shopping page where users can compare and filter by price and brands.According to eMarketer, Amazon is in third position behind the duopoly of Google and Facebook in terms of digital ads. And it's coming for them.Source: eMarketerIn the recent quarter, Amazon's growth was ahead of both Facebook and Google. As new features and advertising tools are launched by Amazon, we should see an upward trajectory for growth in advertising revenue. Amazon's advertising segment is currently close to $10 billion on a trailing-12-month basis. At the current growth rate, this number should hit $20 billion by the end of 2020. Better margins in advertising will help in driving the overall margins higher. We have already seen this in the past few quarters. Amazon reported an operating margin of 7.4% compared to 3.8% in the year-ago quarter. Investor TakeawayThe concerns over a slowdown of the advertising segment in Amazon are overblown. Even at the current growth rate, Amazon should be able to show a revenue trajectory similar to that shown by Facebook in the last five years. There is a high probability that we will see an uptick in advertising growth from Amazon as new tools and features are launched.The long-term growth projections for Amazon's advertising segment are very bright. This will help in lifting the operating margin of the entire company and help in the improvement of EPS. And we should continue to see bullish momentum in Amazon stock in the near future as the advertising segment increases its revenue share. As of this writing, Rohit Chhatwal did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. More From InvestorPlace * 4 Top American Penny Pot Stocks (Buy Before June 21) * The 7 Best Tech Stocks to Buy for the Second Half of 2019 * 7 Top-Rated Biotech Stocks to Invest In Today * 4 Semiconductor Stocks to Sell Compare Brokers The post Amazon's Advertising Business Is in a Transition appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Yahoo Finance•3 days ago
Data suggests Walmart's biggest reason for store closures could be itself
Walmart is raising eyebrows by closing a handful of its stores, but a study suggests the retail giant's problem may be itself.
- Benzinga•3 days ago
Entrepreneurs Take Home $1.2M In Funding At Quicken Loans' Demo Day
Fifteen entrepreneurs pitched judges at the Fillmore Detroit for a share of $1.2 million in funding at the Friday event, which marks the beginning of Detroit Startup Week. Ellis Island Tea, a homegrown hibiscus tea business founded by Nailah Ellis-Brown, took home the grand prize investment of $300,000.
- Yahoo Finance•3 days ago
The Fed is wrong about inflation and productivity
When it comes to inflation, Federal Reserve officials resemble the characters Estragon and Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s existential play “Waiting for Godot.”
- Yahoo Finance Video•3 days ago
Businesses head to DC to make their case against tariffs
Businesses from across the country are making their way to Washington to ask the Trump administration not to put tariffs on products they import from China. Yahoo Finance's Jessica Smith joins Seana Smith.
